DEFENSE BASE CLOSURE

Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission of 2005 affected Elmendorf AFB and Fort Richardson “Alaska” Joint basing

Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission of 2005 affected Elmendorf AFB and Fort Richardson “Alaska” Joint basing

The preliminary 2005 Base Realignment and Closure list was released by the United States Department of Defense on May 13, 2005. It is the fifth Base Realignment and Closure ("BRAC") proposal generated since the process was created in 1988. It recommends closing 33 major United States military bases and the "realignment" (either enlarging or shrinking) of 29 others. On September 15, 2005, President George W. Bush approved the BRAC Commission's recommendations, leaving the fate of the bases in question to the United States Congress. Congress had a maximum of 45 days to reject the proposal by passing a joint resolution of disapproval, or the recommendations automatically enter into effect. Such a resolution (H.J.Res. 65) was introduced to the House of Representatives on September 23, 2005, by Rep. Ray LaHood (R-IL) (no such resolution was introduced in the Senate). The House took up debate of the resolution on October 26, 2005. The resolution failed to pass, thereby enacting the list of recommendations. The Secretary of Defense was required to begin implementing the recommendations by September 15, 2007 and must complete implementation no later than September 15, 2011.

Pentagon officials calculated that, if adopted in full by the nine-member BRAC Commission, the recommendations would have saved almost $50 billion over 20 years. The BRAC Commission (officially known as the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission) disputed this claim, pointing out what it considered to be significant flaws in the Department's methodology. The Commission recalculated the 20-year savings of the DOD recommendation list at just above $37 billion. Between late May and late August, the Commission reviewed the list and amended many of the Pentagon's recommendations, removing several major installations from the closure list. The Commission has calculated the overall 20-year savings to the government in carrying out its amended list of recommendations as close to $15 billion.

Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on May 12, 2005 that the two-year effort to produce the list had several objectives:

better integrate active and reserve units

rearrange forces to be able to act around the globe

make the military more flexible and agile

improve cooperation between military service branches while training and fighting

convert unneeded capacity into warfighting capability

The 2005 BRAC round is the fifth since the process was initiated in 1988, and it is the first since 1995. It differs significantly from its predecessors in several respects:

it is the first with a nine-member commission (the 1991, 1993, and 1995 commissions had eight members)

it is the only stand-alone round authorized by Congress (the 1988 BRAC round was initiated by the Secretary of Defense, and the 1991-1995 rounds were authorized together in the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act of 1990)

it is the first BRAC round focused on military force transformation, not infrastructure reduction

it is the only round to form part of a worldwide ...